


here, we'll burn

by potato_post_community



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League vs. Teen Titans (2016)
Genre: Angst, Basically just me watching the Teen Titans movies, Damian Wayne Feels, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Hell, Hurt No Comfort, I'm debating on it, and then deciding to punch Robin in the f u c k i n g gut, not yet at least, prob should add that in, so there it is, yknow?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 06:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21193445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potato_post_community/pseuds/potato_post_community
Summary: Before the events of the Justice League vs. The Teen Titans, Damian dies and he goes to hell. This Hell reminds him just a little too much of that.





	here, we'll burn

**Author's Note:**

> saw a little bit of an idea while i was watching this movie and went, WOAH and wanted to write it.
> 
> hh, tumblr: [potato-reblob](https://potato-reblob.tumblr.com/)

He steps out of Raven’s portal to feel a flush of heat against his skin, finding it’s way into his suit. Spikes shoot up from the red world beyond like animal tusks piercing skin. There’s a ridge further away, spanning up the height of a mountain. It glows an orangey yellow- a curtain of lava falling down to the river below. 

Raven speaks about how she is the only one able to touch the crystal. Damian finds himself unable to listen. 

(_I won’t go back, _ he screams. _ I can’t go back. _ The ghosts and ghouls and demons do not listen to his pleas as they drag him down into the flaming depths, for monsters do not care for anyone but themselves. _ Father!_)

Beast Boy groans when Raven finishes, hands flying to his stomach. The group worries after him with what time they can spare. It’s very little, really. They all force their way up to the bridge that connects to what Damian would call a tower of sorts. 

Instead of saying, _ why can’t you warp us there?_, like he wants- to keep his mind off his insecurities, he ends up voicing them instead. “It looks different,” he says. “Are you certain we are in Hell?” 

The group twists to look at him, but none falter in their steps. Starfire adopts a worried look as she tentatively asks, “What do you mean, Robin?” 

(There are shackles on his wrists. Damian screams and twists and pleads because it _ burns _ and once upon a time Mother loved him, but that is not here because here Damian lost it the moment that he looked her in the eyes and spoke.) 

Instinctively, his hands rise to his throat. He looks up, expecting to see a rectangular slit in the sky that shows Gotham’s grey sky. He doesn’t see anything other than a world set aflame. For a sliver of a moment, Damian chokes. 

In his ear, Mother whispers, _ come back with us, _ and Damian tries to blink it away. “I- I am unsure that I can describe it.” He tries to quirk a smile and crack a joke. “There are less chains attached to me, of course.” 

Beast Boy goes whiter. Blue Beetle’s eyes go wider. 

Damian doesn’t think he quite understands it when Raven reaches back for his wrist. She already knows- she rifled through his mind and saw her own father staring back at her. It must’ve been hard. He makes a note to apologize again- later, though. Not now. Now he’s on a mission and there is no time for foolish games. 

(Trigon reaches for him, eyes alight, and utters, _ I have prepared a place for you, boy, _ and Damian struggles against everything he knows as his body lights on fire. The chains are red hot and pierce his skin, but when you are dead you should not be able to feel a thing. Damian feels every little second of it.) 

They are thrown into a battle before he has to explain. Suddenly, all his thoughts are circling around the sword in his hand and the beasts before him. Beasts, granted, he’s never really seen. They feel like second nature to him- like he knows who they are but cannot bring himself to remember. 

He has a close call- once, maybe, thrice- and then yells at Raven to rush up to the top of the tower so that he can try to deal with this one final beast before him. It has three heads and six legs, all sharp teeth and edges intent on slicing through skin like butter. It’s Beast Boy who saves them- him and Blue Beetle both- this time. 

Damian can’t bring himself to panic, though. Not about these beasts. He worries of the weight pulling up up towards the sky and of the way that the lava bubbles beneath them and imagines that that isn’t Grayson he sees in the corners of his eyes. 

He abandons the fight and follows Raven up the tower. Nothing has happened yet, it’s all he can assume that something is wrong and that Raven is fighting some other beast that’s too strong. 

The weight of the grapple gun in his hand is familiar. The _ zzt _ bleeds into his ears and calms him momentarily. The wind in his face clears his mind.

He sees Raven on the ground first- then an unknown attacker looming over her. With the grace beat into him by his tutors, he drops down onto the ground, pulling out his sword swiftly. He looks up, ready to attack at a moments notice-

But that’s Grandfather before him. 

(His assassins drive a blade through Father’s stomach as he yells, Grayson sinks into the ground as he says, _ You and I both know there’s only one place for liars to go, don’t we? _ Damian knows, oh lord does he know. 

And then he’s burning and Trigon looks just a little too much like Grandfather as he roars, but that is because Grandfather is a demon of his own creation and Damian is just like him.) 

“_Damian,_” his grandfather coos, “my _ blood._”

Damian is not _ his _ anymore, so he covers up his surprise and comes up with excuses. “I saw you die,” he says, but his voice wobbles because everyone comes back and Grandfather knows that more than anyone ever will. He ignores how Grandfather’s eyes glow red, lacking pupils or green irises. A demon, he thinks, but Damian is one too. 

Grandfather promises Damian the world that he grew up wanting- a world under his and his grandfather’s control. “Trigon can give it to us,” Grandfather mutters, and Damian knows that every word is just to pull him in- and even though he knows it, he lets himself be dragged down just a little further. “A perfect world. All you have to do is prove your love” -but love never had a _ place _ in Damian’s word, only loyalty did- “and kill _ her._” 

Her. 

Raven.

(There are screams in his ears as faces dance around him. Father hands, his cape swinging behind him. He did this. He killed him and everyone else. Damian is a murderer- the role of Robin does not call for murderers, it calls for little boys with heartbreak etched into their faces and a bitter little song in their soul.) 

“I would do _ anything,_” Damian gasps. Behind him, Raven heaves as she stares at the ground. He feels lost- too lost. He flounders in a sea of skeletons chained to the ocean floor, mouths open in a silent plea- crying for mercy. “_Anything _ to bring you back. But I- Grandfather, I-” He sounds too young. Part of him thinks that Father has made him weak. _ Grayson _ has made him weak. 

Though, it turns out that he’s just always _ been _ weak. 

“You hesitate,” his grandfather says, stepping forward. The tip of Damian’s sword knocks against his armor. “This is the one act that will restore me. Are you afraid to do it?” 

His conversation with Grayson rings in his head like church bells. “I am not afraid of anything.” 

He’s afraid of this place, of Grandfather, of Father. He’s afraid of Mother and her manipulative words and of Raven and of Grayson. He’s afraid of everything and everyone, but to be afraid is to show weakness. Trigon had pulled all of his fears out into the open, and Damian swallows them down- shoving and pushing and _ burying _ them so deep into the ground that he thinks that he can lie.

He knows it when Grandfather’s words shake with rage. Part of him tenses up, prepared for a blow. _ You dare disobey me? _ his lips say, but all Damian can here is the rush of blood past his ears. _ Have you forgotten your heritage? You are an _al Ghul.

“I,” Damian says, and _ god, _ he’s so sick of being afraid and of lying and of pretending that he is someone he is not, so he looks his Grandfather in the eyes and he shakes because he is _ Damian Wayne_, “am a _ Titan._” 

Damian fades into Robin and Robin leaps into every fight he can get his hands on. 

His sword clangs against metal and he loses himself in the fight. 

He gets thrown around like a ragdoll, he gets cut up and sliced apart and it feels like his very soul is tearing at the seams every time he gets an inch to close to the lava. Grandfather’s sword cleaves through his stomach and it _ hurts- _

(Heretic’s blade stabs through him and exits out his back. His eyes shut. _ Mother, _ he thinks, and all he feels is pain. When he opens them again, he’s burning.) 

-it hurts so bad. Somehow he stomps it down and only grits his teeth. Grandfather calls him ungrateful, and Damian already _ knows _ that. He knows it and he lives it and there is nothing that Damian can do about it because that is all he is. 

Robin pretends like he doesn’t hear it. 

Robin jumps back into the fight. 

Robin keeps fighting. 

He is blind to Raven’s inner battle. He is blind to anything and everything other than himself, even as Grandfather knocks him to the ground and his sword goes flying. 

This is it, Damian Wayne thinks, this is it. 

Robin gets back up, because there is nothing else that Robin can do. 

The second that he gets his hand on Grandfather- Ra’s sword, it feels like the battle is won. 

He watches as demons climb up from out of the ground and hold Ra’s down in place. (They’re all over him, hissing and sneering and drooling. He prays that he’ll die soon. He is already dead.) Robin does not feel or act. He only watches. 

When Ra’s _ begs_, calling Damian’s name, it is Robin who lifts the sword. He brings it down- a mess of blood and gore, but nothing he hasn’t seen before- and lets Ra’s head slide off of his body and drop to the ground. It is Robin who walks away, using the sword as a cane to lean on, because Robin never loses and Robin doesn’t show weakness. 

It is Robin who watches Raven fall to the ground, a perfect little crystal held in her hand. It is Robin who listens as Starfire touches down and as Raven warbles about the need for Trigon to be watched. It is Robin who watches as Starfire extends a hand out and says, _ lets go home. _ It is Robin who itches to say something when Raven says that she needs to stay.

It is Damian Wayne who steps forward. “Home is the place that- when you have to go there- they have to take you in.” -_Robert Frost, _ Starfire says, and Damian ignores her- “You are coming with us.” 

They go _ home_. 

(A while later, they call the Justice League and Father happens to say, _ as are we, _ when Wonder Woman tells Starfire to be proud. Damian hears it as _ I’m proud of you. _ It’s as close as he thinks he’ll get to it, at least.) 


End file.
